medieval tropes in Japanese RPGs

35: Nier Replicant’s perspective on medieval eschatology: Post-apocalyptic setting as a critique of medieval tropes in Japanese RPGs

Albert de Vanves, @relinuss, The Army Museum of Paris/Paris-Sorbonne University

NieR starts in our future, in the year 3287, but the environments and setting look like a typical fantasy action-RPG: the protagonist wakes up in a village, meets guards, hunts for food and fights with a sword against “Shades”, monsters that attack on sight. To save Yonah, his sick daughter/sister (depending of the version) from the Black Scrawl, the hero is tasked by the two leaders of the village to restore the power of “Grimoire Weiss” by defeating large monstrous Shades all over different locations. As in many fantasy-based games, this quest is presented in the form of a prophecy by Popola, delivered as artwork reminiscent of a medieval illumination scrolls by. The player is motivated by the goal of saving Yonah and the world from a deadly disease and dangerous enemies

The crepuscular tone of NieR is pushed by throwbacks to the Biblical Apocalypse. NieR's prequel, Drakengard, ends on the destruction of the world by the arrival of a Red Dragon and a giant Grotesquerie Queen. This should remind you of the Whore of Babylon/the Dragon in the book of Revelation. In a world that loops back to medieval times, NieR’s story brings the threat of a new annihilation as a legitimate motive for the PC to use violence, especially when confronted to his dark look-alike counterpart, “The Shadowlord”, who serves as an Antichrist figure. As the story depicts the desperate struggle for food of the villagers and against the Black Scrawl, we can think of the discourses at the end of the Middle Ages, when scholars expected God but also the Antichrist to bring an end to these troubled times of wars and plagues.

Of course, there is a twist: approaching the first ending of the game, the player discovers that the Shades were the original humans, and those populating the world right now are only “Replicants”. The protagonist is the one that ends humanity by defeating his own “Gestalt”. Prompted to start a 2nd playthrough, the change of perspective reveals the lies of the prophecy and the point of view of the major enemies of the game, who were not trying to destroy the world. The PC was wronged, but never actually questioned in his quest for vengeance. His obsession against the Shadowlord especially echoes the surge of eschatological anxiety after the Great Schism in 1378: as more and more preachers accused the Pope or the other one to be the Antichrist, others were less and less uncompromising with the Church.

The shift of perspective is the core of NieR's story: its main designer, Taro Yoko, explores the theme of violence and morality in games since Drakengard. Character’s actions are justified by their own motives, but also by a nihilistic feeling that the world is ending. As a commentary on violence in games, the uses of medieval eschatology in NieR opens more considerations: how many medieval or fantasy games use the threat of the Apocalypse, of an “Antichrist” or of a decaying world to justify radical, and even violent, behaviors?

Final Note: in these correlations between NieR and late medieval discourses around the end of times, is missing a God. The Wait for God is a matter I hope to discuss in a later paper about the sequel, NieR : Automata, and about its “post-post-apocalyptic” setting.

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